SPAGHETTI! SPAGHETTI!

Jeffrey shouted and sang after Sarah said that's what we're likely to have for dinner tonight before we headed out the door for school this morning! Well, THEY headed to school, I had to take them there.


And our son followed that with: "That was my celebratory essay!" Or was it congratulatory? Meh, any time the kids use a word longer than three syllables, I KNOW they got that from me. What can I say, it took a long time for me to eschew obfuscation. (Avoid confusion.)

Really, I thought that if you sounded smart with big words that by some sort of osmosis you were! Then I got married -- no wait, I met Martha, and I found out for the first time in my life that chewing with my mouth closed was truly an issue with ME, as in I didn't do it. You think snoring's an issue? Wait until you hear and your kids mimic what your spouse sees!


I'm trying to keep my mind out of trivia, I really am. This morning before work I stopped in Gideon's Trumpet and looked over their selection of Bibles. I'm in the market for a new one because even with my bifocals lately it's getting hard to read in the morning. But I'm picky. I want a King James Version, I want it to have -- or at least have room for -- notes without too much commentary of its own. The Bible is its own best commentary.


I talked with Sheri and Kay on duty there and Kay who's a Facebook friend of mine brought up a post I'd shared about my brother Brian who'd just been promoted to two-star general in the United States Army, technically a major general. And I brought up that the reason a lieutenant general with three stars outranks a major general (whereas a major outranks a lieutenant) is because until the 18th century Western militaries referred to major generals as sergeant major generals. Whoosh.


Anyway, a lieutenant definitely outranks a sergeant. And after the Clone Wars of the extended Star Wars mythology, troopers of every last rank are set out as soldiers of the Empire to hunt down and kill every last Jedi. Including one Ahsoka Tano, whom we'll see in E.K. Johnston's novel Star Wars: Ahsoka (ISBN 9781484705667) after leaving the Jedi Order -- put simply, she got accused of a crime she didn't commit -- missed getting shot down but is still on the run in the Outer Rim of the galaxy, making friends, picking up skills, and fighting Imperial oppression wherever and however she can.


I said "whom we'll see" in the last paragraph because wha proof copy subject to final editing. The young adult (YA) novel doesn't come out until next month, but Main Street Books gets loads of proof copies they can't sell because they're unpriced so they give away one with each purchase. I get some good reading in that way. From Minot Public Library I also checked out and read volume two of Descender (ISBN 9781632156761), continuing the story of Tim-21, the companion android at a mining colony who woke up in a galaxy that wants to scrap every robot it can find. Quite naturally, the robots do not take that lying down.


The title of volume two "Machine Moon" (I just typed Machine Man, the Marvel Comics character that reminded me of, but I fixed it) refers to the home base of the Hardwire resistance movement comprised of the robots that survived the cullings of the United Galactic Council, the Gnish Empire, and whatever bounty hunter or scrapper wanted a piece of them after gigantic robots called Harvesters threatened their existence. And the key to their programming is in Tim-21. And now Tim-22, the adopted "son" of Psius the Hardwire leader as well. Which leaves the biological populations of known space not exactly quaking in fear, but needing to know what happens next and providing an effective countermeasure for it.


By creating their own Harvesters if necessary, David